gemstone: a hard colorful mineral that has a brilliant or glassy luster ore: a rock that contains a metal or economically useful mineral smelting: an ore is melted to separate the important minerals from the other elements that the ore contains alloy: a solid mixture of two or more metals
Outline
The Uses of Minerals
many things around you are made out of minerals
windows are made out of minerals
chairs
white boards
Gemstones
gemstones are used for decorations, jewelry, and mechanical parts
Metals
metals contain minerals
such as...
aluminum
iron
copper
silver
metals can be...
stretched into wire
flattened into sheets
hammered without breaking
molded without breaking
Other Useful Minerals
talc is used to make talcum powder
fluorite is used in making aluminum and steel
quartz is used in making glass
kaolin is used in china and pottery
gypsum is used in wallboard, cement, and stucco
corundum is used to polish and clean products
Ores
an ore is a rock that has a metal or useful mineral
a metal usually has a metal combined with a number of other elements
Prospecting
a prospector is someone who looks for an ore deposit
they prospect by observing what kind of rock there are at places
they examine the plants that grow there
they also test stream water for certain chemicals
Mining
strip mines
earthmoving equipment scrapes away the soil to show the ore
open pit mines
huge earthmoving equipment dig a gigantic pit
can get as wide and deep as one kilometer
open pit mines are for ore deposits that start near surface, but goes way down
shaft mines
a network of tunnels to get all of the veins of ore
mining can be very harmful to the environment
strip mining and pit mining can never get rid of entirely
waste materials pollute rivers and lakes
U.S. has laws to try and do as less damage as you can
Smelting
you must remove the metal from the ore
the process of doing this is called smelting
they crush the iron core and mix it with limestone and coke
they put the mixture in a blast-furnace so the coke burns
when the coke burns, it changes the chemical so the mixture makes carbon dioxide gas and molten iron
the iron sinks to bottom and gets filtered out
the slag gets poured of through another filter
after you are done with smelting you need to do another process to get rid of the impurities from iron
Table of Contents
4.3 Mineral Resources
Vocabulary
gemstone: a hard colorful mineral that has a brilliant or glassy luster
ore: a rock that contains a metal or economically useful mineral
smelting: an ore is melted to separate the important minerals from the other elements that the ore contains
alloy: a solid mixture of two or more metals
Outline
The Uses of Minerals
Smelting Ores Process
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